


Do-Gooders

by wordhouse



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:34:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordhouse/pseuds/wordhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories. </p><p>Barisi style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do-Gooders

The squad room was unusually quiet and half-dark when Rafael walked into the precinct. As it should be on a late Saturday night that was minutes from being Sunday morning. Everyone was out enjoying the weekend. As he had been until twenty minutes ago when he got Olivia’s call. If a glass of bourbon and catching up on a week’s worth of Wall Street Journal could be called enjoyable. He must be getting old, because a day to himself with nothing to do wasn’t just a joy, it was paradise.

Other than a few uniforms from the night shift, Carisi seemed to be the only other one there, slumped low in his chair at his desk. “Where’s everyone else?” Rafael asked as he made a stop at his desk. “Don’t tell me we’re the only ones clueless enough to answer our phones late on a Saturday night.” The detective sighed or yawned and sank even farther into his seat. Carisi was very much out of uniform. The mafia prince hair gel was gone, and now it finally made sense, because without it, his hair was all over the place, a cross between bed-head and bedlam, making Carisi look like he was still in high school. In that theme, the green T-shirt he was wearing belonged on a freshman, it was so small, with black or gray jeans that fit him so well even Rafael was impressed. How had he not noticed those thighs?

“You been working undercover again?” he asked. Carisi needed to give up the Mop Boy schtick and try Rent Boy in a Boy Band. If someone could fix his Shaggy Doo hair.

“No.” Rafael couldn’t decide if the dark expression Carisi directed at him was a glare or exhaustion. The dark half-moons threatening to eclipse his eyes could have been the lighting. There was some sort of pattern on his shirt. A superhero logo, Rafael guessed. The Green Lantern? The Hulk? The image of the tall, skinny detective going all Hulk almost made him smile. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. The shirt was at least two sizes too small. Just one deep breath. 

“Sarge is in her office,” he said.

“Thank you, detective.” As if Rafael couldn’t see that for himself. He wondered what had cast a cloud over Carisi’s annoying trademark sunny attitude. Hopefully it was just being called in at midnight on a Saturday in a silly shirt. Please, not another victim too young to even walk. Those cases haunted him, haunted all of them.

Olivia was weekend casual, too, in khakis with a buttoned shirt over a tanktop, her hair tied back in a loose knot. The phone was cradled between her ear and shoulder as she worked at her computer, but as soon as she saw Rafael in the doorway, she was saying goodbye to her nanny. “Thank you, Lucy. I’ll be home as soon as possible,” she said and immediately switched her attention to Rafael. “Good, you’re here, thank you for coming in,” she said. “We need warrants two hours ago.”

“Tell me what we got, Liv,” he said.

“We got a rape victim at a club. Could be multiple assailants. We need to get the security footage before it conveniently disappears. We might also have a cellphone video, but the possible witness is not cooperating.”

“I can work with that. It will take a while to find a judge this late, but I’ll wake up all of them if I must.” Rafael took out his phone and started scrolling through names. “Where are the troops?” he asked, with a nod at the deserted office. “Rollins and Amaro with the vic?”

“No,” she said. Even though she looked tired, there was also the energy that Olivia always brought to the job, even on the weekend after a sixty-hour week when she deserved to be home with Noah. “It’s just me and Tutuola. Nick is in D.C. ... and we want to keep it close for now, until we know more.”

“And Carisi?”

A determination flashed in her eyes that Rafael recognized when she glanced over his shoulder toward the squad room. Olivia’s trademark was a hybrid guard-dog killer mother bear mode that came out for the people she wanted to protect. “It’s complicated. The victim is a young male. A teenager, sixteen or seventeen. He was at Pulse.” Rafael didn’t recognize the name. His clubbing days had been spent dancing with law books at the Harvard library. “It’s a new gay club. Carisi is the one who found him in the bathroom and called it in.”

“I see.” It was easy to fill in everything Olivia wasn’t saying. So Carisi had been in a gay nightclub, not working undercover. Now the outfit and sullen attitude fell into place. The revelation wasn’t exactly a revelation for Rafael. On more than one occasion, he had noticed Carisi’s interest in him. And how much Carisi tried to rein it in when he got Booyah, Fordham Law in return.

“This happened before, at Staten Island. Not an attack like this.” Olivia paused and brushed stray strands of hair away from her face. “I mean, other officers found out about him, and Carisi had to transfer. He hasn’t said anything, but I know he’s worried it will happen again.”

“That wouldn’t happen here,” Rafael said.

“Not on my watch,” Olivia agreed. “But he’s stressed out, and it’s understandable. In a lot of ways, the NYPD is still a good ol’ boys club. It’s just gone underground.”

“I’ll get the warrants and anything else you need. But you know how hard it is to keep these things quiet. The people who hope they don’t have to testify always end up testifying.”

“I know. He knows, too.” Olivia’s attention shifted from him, and he turned to find Carisi at the door. He still wouldn’t look at him, not directly. The green T-shirt made his blue eyes practically glow, but his glances kept sliding off and around Rafael. In the time since Rafael had left him at his desk, he had dragged his hands through his hair, so it stood out in tufts like the crazy scientist from the Michael Fox movies. His chest glittered in the muted light from the lamp on Olivia’s desk. The vaguely familiar logo was lined with green and silver shiny things. Sequins? An image flashed through his mind, in the blink of an eye, of Carisi bouncing on the tips of his toes with all that boundless energy of his in a mob of other dancers, the club lights strobing over him and making him sparkle. In another blink, he saw Carisi on the floor of a bathroom stall holding a broken boy and saying, “No, no, no, stay with me.”

“Since I can’t work the case, can I go to the hospital?” Carisi asked Olivia. “The kid hasn’t been ID’d, so he doesn’t have anyone to be there with him. If he wakes up—”

Olivia finished for him. “If he wakes up, call Tutuola. Don’t question him. Keep your phone on you in case we need you.”

“Yeah, sure, Sarge.” Carisi said, already leaving. Rafael watched him head into the officers’ locker room.

“Judge Burke—” Olivia started, but Rafael interrupted.

“Give me a minute,” he said. With her leave, he followed Carisi, cellphone and judges tucked in a pocket so he could flip through his dayplanner and a dozen business cards.

In the locker room, Carisi was at his locker, already jerking a thin jacket over the T-shirt. The shiny sequins disappeared with the aggressive yank of the zipper. Which comic book heroes favored green? What was the one that lived in the ocean? Superman and Batman were easy, ingrained into pop culture, but as for the rest, Rafael didn’t know Flash from Speedy. He had grown-up on Doonesbury and old Pogo strips his abuelito had shared with him.

When the other man saw him, Carisi actually flinched. He closed the locker so carefully, it didn’t make a sound. “Don’t,” he said. “Just ... just get the warrants, OK?”

Rafael held out a small gray card between two fingers. “He specializes in EEOC and discrimination cases,” he said.

Carisi stared at the card in his hand, but not at Rafael. “I won’t need it.”

“I hope that’s true. You should still take it.”

“I’m not taking anyone at NYPD to court.” Carisi squinted at the piece of paper as if he could make it burst into flame from the intensity of his glare. Rafael knew he took the card just to get rid of him. He couldn’t not see the way his hand was shaking or how he tried to hide it. And Carisi was too much of a detective to miss that he had noticed. He turned away from him and kicked the locker so hard the whole wall of metal shelving rattled. “Fuck!” he hissed, raising his hands like claws, then sat down just as suddenly and clenched his hands in his hair. Rafael was sure he could have counted with him, one to ten, while he got himself under control. “This is so fucked,” he muttered at the floor.

“Yes, it is.” Rafael could picture his own hand in his hair, patting him, petting him, combing the mess until he looked like himself again. He decided that he would crush anyone who was stupid enough to go after Carisi. Under a mountain of lawsuits. Unlike Carisi, he had no problem hammering any and all homophobic NYPD officers with so many civil rights violation charges that the only job in law enforcement they’d be able to find once he got done with them would be as a mall cop. In Moscow. “A lot of men in your situation would have walked away. Would have called 911 anonymously,” Rafael said.

“I’m not leaving anyone anywhere to bleed out alone in some goddamn toilet, not for this job, not for anything, but fuck.” Carisi pushed the toe of his shoe against the base of the locker, like he was still thinking about kicking it some more. “I just wanted to hang out with my friends, and yeah, I wanted to get laid, just like everyone else in New York City on a Saturday night, like a normal person. If I had been at a club with a girl, it wouldn’t matter, no one would care. But instead ... I’m going to be the office gossip on Monday.”

Rafael could hear the word he left out. Again. He was going to be the office gossip, again. It was a feeling Rafael remembered well. All gay and bisexual men grew up with some form of that fear. Some never had the chance to outgrow it.

“Well,” Rafael said, as he took out another card and scribbled on the back of it, “if you still want to get laid, stop by my place when you’re done.” The words took a few seconds to sink in before Carisi turned his head to blink at the card, then glance up at Rafael. His face was a mix of confusion and surprise and disbelief. Like he was waiting for the punch line, the next punch to the gut. “It might as well be some really good gossip.” Rafael leaned down and, with Carisi finally looking him right in the eyes, tucked the slip of paper under the collar of the green T-shirt peeking out from under his jacket. “I have a weakness for hopelessly heroic real-life superheroes.”

Rafael put away his planner and went back to work with his phone. “I have to drag some judges out of bed. Just as fun as it sounds.” Carisi watched him walk away without a word, but as the door swung closed behind him, Rafael saw him pull out the neck of his shirt to look at the card, then reach in to retrieve it.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a chapter two. If there's a chapter two, there will be a chapter three. We'll see. I might just nap more.


End file.
